Southern Lehigh High School cuts kilowatt usage in half

Thanks to an ambitious energy saving effort, Southern Lehigh High School has cut its electrical usage in half – going from 9 million kilowatts of electricity in 2009 to about 4.5 million.

Thanks to an ambitious energy saving effort, Southern Lehigh High School has cut its electrical usage in half – going from 9 million kilowatts of electricity in 2009 to about 4.5 million. (MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO)

Christy PotterSpecial to The Morning Call

How has Southern Lehigh High School cut energy use?

Used to be that staff and students at Southern Lehigh High School didn't think twice about how much electricity they used. .

"For example, if one person was in the building, we cooled the entire building," Todd Bergey, district director of support services, said.

But thanks to an ambitious energy saving effort, Bergy said, the high school has cut its usage in half – going from 9 million kilowatts of electricity in 2009 to about 4.5 million.

Bergey gave an update on the achievement at Tuesday's school board meeting. He said the district is working with PPL and it's Continuous Energy Improvement pgoram.

Working with a team of staff and students in 2009, Bergey said he began to look at ways the school could save money and reduce its energy consumption.

Over the next year, the school's usage went from 9 million kilowatts to 6 million.

"We thought that's all we could do," Bergey said, but that's when he learned about a $50,000 grant available from PPL.

The utility works with Strategic Energy Group, a solutions group with a regional office in Allentown that

teaches students and staff how to change their behaviors.

The students, Bergey said, have embraced the challenges wholeheartedly. They formed the Energy Improvement Club and have helped develop a logo to get the word out.

Next year, he said, there will be a building-wide kickoff and pep rally. He said later he'd like to see the program rolled out at the middle school, Joseph P. Liberati Intermediate School and Liberty Bell Elementary School.

Even though the program is just getting its legs, Bergey said the steps they've taken have led to substantial savings. LED lights have been installed in the parking lot, for example, and HVAC technician Sean McKenna has reprogrammed the units to only come on when necessary.

Over the past 16 months, the high school has saved $44,000 worth of kilowatt hours.

Bergey said school officials can log on to the PPL website and track their usage. From the 6 million kilowatt hours once considered the best they could do, the school is now down to a little more than 4.5 million kilowatt hours per year, meaning they've cut their consumption in half since 2009 and in the past year saved the school district $200,000.

"The carbon footprint is what the kids care about," Bergey said. "They don't care about the money, they care about what this world's going to be like when they're our age."

Ralie Kubat, a representative of Strategic Energy Group, was on hand to present a $25,000 check to the district. The other $25,000 will come next year. She said only eight schools in Pennsylvania signed up for the PPL challenge, and Southern Lehigh High School had the second highest savings this year.